Links to Chapter One and Chapter Two
Edmund slipped and shivered through the snow until he eventually found the Witch’s castle. It looked quite creepy, but bolstered by thoughts of Turkish Delight (oh, his Saracens – and the Scarlets were his favourite Welsh side), he crept through the imposing main gate.
He found himself in a courtyard filled with statues. They had snow settling on them, and they all looked very sad. Near the gate, there were a couple of magnificent Lions, and then he spotted a statue that looked very like Lucy’s description of Mr Iknus. There was a collection of stone rugby balls, and what looked like a few referees. (“Those referees probably deserved it,” thought Edmund.)
Suddenly, Edmund was rooted to the spot by a chilling low growl. He turned his head to find himself staring into the eyes of Maugrim, chief of the Witch’s Very Secret Police.
“Come,” said Maugrim, “Her Majesty is expecting you.”
* * *
“What!” said the Witch, not at all friendly like the last time, “Have you come alone? I told you to bring the Daughters of Maeve and the other Son of George.”
“B – b – but,” stammered Edmund, afraid of her icy stare and stern manner, “I couldn’t get them away from the Beavers. They were all talking about the return of Paulan to Narnia.”
The Queen turned even paler, if that were possible.
“Paulan!” she muttered to herself, “No, it cannot be possible. My spells are strong.”
Before Edmund knew what had happened, she had crossed the room and spear-tackled him with one strong arm. “Tell me all,” she said, preparing to drive his head into the ground.
Edmund, quaking with fear, told her all that he knew.
The Witch released him with a thump on the floor, and clapped her hands to summon her minions.
“Harness the springboks and prepare my sledge immediately! Get my dwarf! Maugrim: take the swiftest of your wolves, go to the Lodge, and kill the children and the Beavers. If they have already gone, then proceed to the Stone Stadium.”
In the twinkling of a drop goal, the sledge pulled up, driven by a dwarf who looked suspiciously like a scrum-half. Edmund was bound, and unceremoniously dumped into the bottom of the sledge. There wasn’t even any Turkish Delight.
* * *
“Susan,” said Peter, “Where’s Edmund?”
“I – I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I haven’t noticed him for a while.”
“Ah, children,” said Mr Beaver, “I’m afraid he’s gone to see the Witch. We must be on our way quickly.”
“What?”, said Lucy, “No, surely Edmund would never betray us.”
“Daughter, I’m afraid he has the look of one who is in the Witch’s favour. How long that favour lasts is another matter.
“Did anyone notice when he left? Did he hear that Paulan is on the move?”
Nobody was quite sure.
“Then we must be off at once. Mrs Beaver, please pack us up as quickly as you can.”
Mrs Beaver – for of course it’s always the females who are prepared for anything – had already got nearly everything ready for travelling. She had a pack ready for everyone, and they were off in less time than it takes to reset a scrum.
* * *
They had a long, cold and weary journey, and stopped after some hours at a safe hiding place, where they cast themselves down on the floor, covered themselves with the blankets kindly provided by Mrs Beaver, and fell asleep immediately.
They were awakened at dawn by some faint voices, which became clearer as they drew closer.
“Ho, ho ho! Go left! It’s on!”
“I’m straighter than that throw-in.”
The children rubbed the sleep from their eyes and looked in confusion at the Beavers.
“It’s Father Jiffy and Father Nige,” beamed Mr Beaver. “The Witch’s magic has kept them from Narnia for so long, but her enchantment is fading. The voices of rugby have returned to the land.” They rushed outside to find a volley of rugby balls flying through the air, and the snow at last melting.
Ovally Balls 
Oh dear Jenkins has written stuff again. Funnily enough this whole covid thing wasn’t over in 2 weeks like he thought it would be.
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Just want o make sure that you are adequately covered so as not to shock the poor, sheltered denizens of Edinburgh.
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It’s a sanitised fist.
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‘fairly average pants’
Makes me think that there’s some kind of Overton’s window of pant quality.
Maybe average for some, an outright disgrace for others.
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Hand in glove?
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No. I’m going Full Boris with this fist bump.
Should be OK.
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craigs, after what we mentioned the other day, I’ll have a read of this later:
Are Policy Analogies Persuasive? The Household Budget Analogy and Public Support for Austerity
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/7qa2b/
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*Tip o’ the hat and ‘welcome back’ smile to Brookter*
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I have actually grown even more lazy this last couple of weeks, like a lockdown ennui has beset me. Been reading Dylan Thomas again, especially stories and broadcasts. Even though he wasn’t Valleys he can describe something in a way that puts me so close to childhood memories it’s like both of us were there.
*Beaver Watch*
Not a sausage, though I haven’t been there close to dusk or dawn yet. Found a new duck family of 6 on the river I’m haunting lately. It certainly seems to be safer in the wild than on the duckpond, as Camus almost said.
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This appeared in my youtube feed earlier. It really is a work of genius.
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I got told off on my first shift in the COVID hub here for elbow bumping a colleague. We were told not to do it because of people sneezing into the crook of their elbows.
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8-9 am for me is getting the boys’ daily schoolwork printed off, getting them settled in different parts of the house, making sure the tablet/spare laptop are set up for any online teaching/tasks, agreeing some kind of order for tasks – chances of me attending an 8am call – close to zero
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Diolch, MisterIKs!
Hope you’re all well? DT, when he didn’t have the DTs, was brilliant, wasn’t he? I shall always be fond of Polly Garter.
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@refit
Expected ….? or bolt from the blue?
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Looks as if Ruan Ackers is going to have to start qualifying for Japan now.
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Tomp – I will too. Cheers.
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OT, It’s a very Protestant Northern Irish name.
My aunt and uncle live in Bristol and my aunt kept her maiden (very Irish Catholic, though she’s from Port Talbot – her mum was from Dublin and her father’s family immigrated to Industrial South Wales in the late 19th/early 20th Century) name throughout her professional career and then applied for a passport in the NI name on retirement. But because the name is similar (one letter short) of a fairly common Arabic name she used to get invitations to join the Bristol Asian Women’s Group.
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“But because the name similar (one letter short) of a fairly common Arabic name”
Disappointingly this would seem to rule out Smeraldina Rima. Never mind.
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O’Hammed and McHammed would seem to be the new favourites.
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Pretty sure I know this – insert an M between H and O
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My great Grandad was a proud Irishman from County Antrim, married to my equally Irish Great granny, complete with an Irish surname. He moved to Cowdenbeath to work in the coal mines but continued to be proud of his Irishness and very vocal about it. He instilled in his children (all born in Cowdenbeath) that being Irish was fabulous and that they should be proud of their heritage. Then one of my great uncles did some research and found out that the surname is actually Scottish, which left my Great Grandad crestfallen.
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Scottish, Irish, Irish, Scottish. It’s more or less the same, OT.
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@Trisk – if you’re right then arguably I got it right first time. Which is a surprise.
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There was a lot of to-and-fro across the North Channel going back …well…forever. And “Scot” was historically applied to Irish / Goidelic speaking “types”.
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“There was a lot of to-and-fro across the North Channel”
Nothing compared to what they’ll be when we get the Torr Head-Mull of Kintyre bridge built.
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You were right, CMW.
McNamee wrote Resurrection Men, a grisly book that I don’t like much that was turned into a film I really don’t like. One of the minor characters in that had the same as a great-uncle, same surname again, but with the most loyal of loyal first names. The Ultras is good, and the ones set in the 1940s and 1950s , Blue Tango and Orchid Blue and the other one.
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Aye DCI, DT had a remarkable way with words. Just about getting to the end of the omnibus I’m reading, and Under Milk Wood is the last section. I’ve never read or listened to it before so looking forward to reading it.
I would call it comfort reading in bed, first thing in the morning and – sometimes – last thing at night. Mornings are best though, in that time between 5 and 6-ish when the bladder needs emptying and the bored Cat Minx is dancing and prancing for attention. And then back to sleep for an hour or more which is the best sleep, even though I know I should instead be walking at the river to find beavers.
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OT @15:06 – my grandparents went on holiday to Scotland, went to a tartan shop, and asked to see the family tartan. There was much consulting of books, scratching of heads and so on, and eventually the octogenarian shop assistant was dispatched to the dusty upper regions of the shelves (on a ladder) to proudly produce said cloth.
My grandfather took one look at it, said, ‘Fuck me, that’s hideous’ (or similar), and walked out.
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Quite pleased that my family name doesn’t have a tartan associated with it (or isn’t associated in any way with a clan tartan).
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*Looks suspiciously at BB*
D’ye mean to tell us that your surname doesn’t begin with an M? Pah. Must not be a real Scot.
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To add, we previously had no idea that there was a tartan. It was just something they decided to check. <– ha!
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Pffft. No, doesn’t begin with an ‘M’, but yes, real Scot. Or perhaps I should say, real Borderer. Family background (on both sides) is heavily based there.
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Do you Pffft me, sirrah?
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And I’ve just managed a googlewhack on “saturday night live” “do you mock me”
It was a take-off on Dangerous Liaisons. Very funny … as I recall, but can’t verify.
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“Do you Pffft me, sirrah?”
You sound like a dummy out of the stone age.
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That’s what the Eldest just said to me after I’d finished reading one of the later chapters of Prince Caspian in which Peter issues a challenge to the evil king in very olde worlde language.
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Forsooths and what have you.
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They’ve all had their moments today. Dinner time conversation:
Middle One: Daddy?
Me: Yes.
Middle One: Do you remember when I used to sing the song I made up?
Me: Which Song?
Middle One: Stick Your Finger Up Your Bottom.
Me: Yes.
Middle One: When I sang it….
Me: Yee-ees.
Middle One: I really did stick my finger up my bottom.
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@Iks – you seem to be lacking in discipline if you ask me. If you’re waiting till your bladder and the early morning light wake you then you’re going to miss the beavers anyway so you may as well go back to bed.
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Mr Iks
You’ve got a real treat coming with Under Milk Wood — it’s wonderful!
I have a recording of the original version with Richard Burton from 1954-ish — they were rebroadcast a few years ago. I can email them to you if you’re interested? The quality’s dreadful, as you’d expect…
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@Brookter – Thanks for asking about the family, the girls are all OK even if ‘lockdown’ is causing a bit more grumpiness than usual. And some strange conversations as above though maybe nothing new about that. Some of the older folks in the family not so good as my mother’s had cancer and is just coming towards the end of her chemotherapy and my mother-in-law is not in great health full stop.
I’m not really locked down myself, I’ve been to work every day since it started bar weekends and the bank holidays. Key worker and all that. I’ve wittered on and off over quite a long time about my workplace closing so you may realise I’m losing my job for non-Covid related reasons. Makes the key worker thing a bit of a laugh. So lockdown hasn’t changed my day to day life greatly other than not having to take the kids to stuff, but combined with the desolate wasteland that I’m now working in with almost everyone gone it has brought about some apocalyptic feelings from time to time.
Plan was always to have two or three months off when the job finished. As it turns out that’s the end of July. It was always likely to be the summer and as well as sorting the house out and spending a lot of time with the kids there was an intention to play rather a lot of Real Cricket so it is indeed a source of significant frustration that that’s not going to happen.
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Clyde – I have no witty retort (What’s new? you ask), but wish you and yours the best.
I’ve not had too hard a time with all this, but today has been a real bugger, work-wise.
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This video contains one of my favourite ever fuck ups:
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CMW – good luck mate. Sometimes it really does feel like all the shit hands come at once.
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@Craigs & Thaum – Certainly wasn’t looking for any sympathy vote there, just giving Brookter an update as he was kind enough to ask after me. My situation is a lot better than a lot of people’s – even if I don’t find a job quickly I was on good terms so am getting a decent payout (a lot of weeks’ pay though I don’t earn a fortune). I’m not so sure that many of the recent Covid-unemployed will be getting such a good deal. Other irritations are of the sort shared by all and sundry as things stand and of course it’s hardly unusual at my age to have some older folks to worry about and my mum’s thing seems to be working out quite well. Plenty of my contemporaries have now lost parents and though I have lost one it was almost forty years ago so that’s a different thing. All that said I am sad about what’s happened to my work because I genuinely cared about it and it’s not nice to be actively involved in its destruction. Anyway there’s still a lot of good stuff at the moment, it was a joy to take the girlies out this afternoon and watch all three of them cycle down a massive hill doing tricks on their bikes with none of them with their feet on their pedals, the Little One only turned three in January and is keen to emulate her sisters and hilarious as a result. This place is as ever a joy to follow though I do wish there were still more of us. Brookter’s reappearance is of course cheering on that front.
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The talk of DT probably caused something to creep in there. The Oxford Book of 20th Century English Verse (the one Larkin edited) has probably Thomas’ two greatest poems on facing pages and one of them’s about the death of his father(not that it had happened when he wrote it) and the other’s title is the address of my father’s family home. It’s strange how big an effect these things can have on the mind.
As it happens rather than either of them my favourite is probably Love in the Asylum so that’s what I read when DT came up earlier.
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@CMW,
Sorry to hear about your problems — it must be very difficult, and I hope that new opportunities open for you soon. Your family has always sounded like a delight, albeit one destined to give you hell when they’re all teenagers together…
I wish you all the very best.
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@refit
Thanks for posting that — I think it’s the same recording I have: in fact, sounds like it’s better quality. Wonderful.
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